


The Wooden Box

by SilentSisterNoMore



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, F/M, Oral Sex, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:49:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentSisterNoMore/pseuds/SilentSisterNoMore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maester Luwin finds a mysterious wooden box with a secret message for Catelyn Stark.  She has to decide what to tell Maester Luwin and her husband, Ned, about the message.  </p>
<p>As Catelyn heads down to King's Landing, she remembers her maidenhood and her love affair with her father's ward, Petyr Baelish.</p>
<p>This story has some mature content (which is why I've tagged it as mature) but is more about the plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wooden Box

**Author's Note:**

> The story starts at the point in A Game of Thrones when Maester Luwin brings a message to Catelyn. 
> 
> When I first read AGOT, I wondered why Catelyn destroyed the message before sharing the contents with Ned. At the time, it made me question whether or not she was being truthful about the message. This is the story of what the letter might have said. 
> 
> Additionally, Catelyn seems to be very attractive to several men. I feel like she was probably a more sexual person than she was written by GRRM, so I've tried to bring out that side of her.
> 
> Quotes from A Game of Thrones are bolded. All characters and the contextual story are owned by George RR Martin. I'm providing an alternative version of his story.
> 
> I have used both Petyr and Littlefinger in this story because it seems to me that Catelyn might use both names for her longtime friend.

 

**The master waited until the door had closed behind him before he spoke. “My lord,” he said to Ned, “pardon for disturbing your rest. I have been left a message.”**

**Ned looked irritated. “Been left? By whom? Has there been a rider? I was not told.”**

**“There was no rider, my lord.  Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my observatory while I napped.  My servants saw no one, but it must have been brought by someone in the king’s party.  We have had no other visitors from the south.”**

**“A wooden box, you say?” Catelyn said.** A wooden box had always been Littlefinger’s method of sending her secret messages, usually declarations of his undying love...Could it me a message from him?  But she hadn’t heard from him in over thirteen years!

**“Inside was a fine new lens for the observatory, from Myr by the look of it.  The lenscrafters of Myr are without equal.”**

**Catelyn shivered. “A lens is an instrument to help us see…What is it that they would have us see more clearly?”**

**“The very thing I asked myself.” Maester Luwin drew a tightly rolled paper out of his sleeve. “I found the true message concealed within a false bottom when I dismantled the box the lens had come in, but it is not for my eyes…It is marked for the eyes of Lady Catelyn and her alone.”**

**Catelyn nodded, not trusting to speak.** Dear Gods, could this finally be the message that Littlefinger had promised to send her 15 years ago, before her father separated them?  He had always promised that the day would come when he would send for her with specific directions.  She had promised to obey without question so that they could finally be joined forever.  But she couldn’t very well say that to her husband.  She steeled herself to begin her lies.

**“It’s from Lysa.” Catelyn looked at her husband.  “It will not make us glad,” she told him. “There is grief on this message, Ned.  I can feel it.”** This much, at least, was true.  There would be grief from the letter.

**Catelyn broke the seal.**

**Her eyes moved over the words.  At first they made no sense to her.  Then she remembered. “Lysa took no chances.  When we were girls together, we had a private language, she and I.”** …and Littlefinger.  It was actually he who had come up with the language.  Even as a boy, Petyr Baelish had been incredibly clever.  It had come as no surprise to her that he had risen quickly and achieved success in King’s Landing.

**“Can you read it?”**

**“Yes,” Catelyn admitted**.  It read, “My darling Catelyn.  I always promised that we would be together.  Now is the time for us to be reunited.  I have longed to hold you in my arms and bury my tongue and then my cock in your sweet cunt.  By whatever means necessary, ensure that Ned comes to King’s Landing.  Tell him that the Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn. Petyr”  Catelyn was shocked by what Littlefinger wanted her to say.  But even reading his words, she felt pangs in her heart and in her sex that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

**She threw back the furs and climbed from the bed.  The night air was as cold as the grave on her bare skin as she padded across the room.**

**Maester Luwin averted his eyes.  Even Ned looked shocked. “What are you doing?” he asked.**

**“Lighting a fire,” Catelyn told him.**

**She slid the paper in among the kindling and placed the heavier logs on top of it.**

**Ned crossed the room, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet.  He held her there, his face inches from her. “My lady, tell me!  What was this message?”**

This was the moment of reckoning.  She had to decide what to tell Ned and Maester Luwin.  She looked into her husband’s eyes and considered…

She hadn’t come to the marriage with love.  She had married Ned only after her betrothed, his brother Brandon, had been killed.  It had taken many years for her to love him.  Truly, it hadn’t been until the birth of Arya, who looked so much like him, that she had begun to feel any real affection for him, though she hadn't forgotten that their marriage had separated her from her real love.  Even then, it was a gentle fondness, not the fierce passion with which she had loved Petyr for most of her life.  The idea of seeing him again after so many years was enticing.  At fifteen, he had been willing to lay down his life to fight Brandon Stark, a man of twenty, for her hand.  When had Ned ever shown her such devotion?  Instead, Ned had dishonored her with some unknown women and added insult to injury by bringing home his bastard for her to raise with her own beloved children.  Not that she disliked Jon.  He was a shy, quiet boy who was, furthermore, absolutely devoted to her own boy, Robb.  Nor had she particular cared at the time whom Ned Stark fucked, but he did not know that and had insulted her…She made up her mind.

**“A warning,” she said softly. “if we have wits to hear it…Lysa says that Jon Arryn was murdered.”  His fingers tightened on her arm.  “By whom?”**

**“The Lannisters,” she told him. “The queen.”**   There.  It was done.  There was no turning back now…

************************************************

The sea voyage from White Harbor to King’s Landing gave Catelyn plenty to time to think…and remember the past.  Dear old Ser Rodrik had not taken well to sea and spent most of his time heaving over the side of the ship or groaning in a bed below deck.  Catelyn, who had spent her childhood on boats on the many rivers of Riverlands, adapted to the rocking of the boat without incident, and found herself enjoying the salty spray of sea.

She thought back to the days as a child, and then a young maiden.  She, Lysa, and Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish—and later, her baby brother Edmure—had been inseparable.  Littlefinger was a year younger than Lysa and three years younger than herself, but that hadn’t prevented him from having the most ardent feelings of love for her.  Initially, she’d dismissed him, thinking it was as ridiculous as if her own brother, Edmure, had declared his desire for her.  His declarations of love, and the poems he composed to her beauty, had been so frequent that Catelyn took them for granted and they even became an expected part of her daily routine.

It wasn’t until that fatal day, soon after she flowered, that she realized that she returned his feelings.  Her father, Hoster Tully, summoned her to his private room, where he did the majority of his work to manage Riverrun, and told her that he had arranged her betrothal to Brandon Stark, the heir to Winterfell and the future Warden of the North.  Twenty years later, Catelyn could still remember how she felt upon hearing those words.  The air flew out of her lungs and her heart shattered to pieces, but she kept a false smile on her face.  _Family. Duty. Honor._ Those were the Tully words.It was at that moment that she realized that she could love no other than Petyr Baelish, and that she would be forever separated from him by her marriage...and by Family, Duty, and Honor.

She had resigned herself to marrying Brandon Stark, and resolved to make the best of the few years she had with Petyr before her marriage.  And truly, once she met Brandon, she realized that her father had made a most advantageous match for her.  In addition to being the son of high lord, Brandon was maddeningly handsome and full of fun.  He had the adventurous spirit that Catelyn herself did not possess and had a magnetism that attracted scores of admirers from all tiers of society.  Indeed, he was more popular than even Crown Prince Rhaegar.  He had sexual experience, too, and he eventually pleasured Catelyn and taught her to service him in ways that would leave her maidenhead intact.  She did not love Brandon, but when he bent his head down to lap at her cunt with his skillful tongue, she felt like she could spend eternity with him.  She was more than happy to return the favor and eagerly fell to her knees before him to take his cock in her small hands and into her mouth.  Whether her father was aware of these activities was unclear—though it seemed impossible that the whole castle cold miss her wanton moans and the prolonged, unchaperoned absences during Brandon’s periodic visits to Riverrun.  Regardless, he made no effort to stop their activities.  Ironically, Brandon’s lessons awoke her own powerful sexuality and she lost no time in relaying what she learned to her beloved Petyr. 

At least once a week, after the entire castle had gone to bed, Petyr sneaked into her chambers.  Some days, they would just lie in each other’s arms or kiss for hours.  As Petyr grew up, their behavior became increasingly sexual.  Littlefinger lacked Brandon’s physique and experience—Brandon was, after all, five years older than Petyr and almost a man grown—but his sensitivity and enthusiasm when he licked and sucked on her added their own charm.  The first time Catelyn stroked him, he came in less than a minute.  The first time she took him in her mouth, he spent immediately.  Brandon didn’t mind if she sometimes spit out his seed, but with Petyr, she swallowed every time, determined to keep as much of him inside her as possible, as if to savor for a time when she could no longer have him.  They muffled their cries and moans with pillows, and somehow managed to avoid detection by Hoster Tully, Lysa, and even Catelyn’s maid, Rosie, who spread gossip faster than lightning. The secrecy of their relationship added a special excitement to it, and Petyr build a small wooden box with a secret compartment to house the messages they would send each other to arrange their clandestine meetings. 

The time eventually came when her marriage to Brandon had been planned for a couple of months later.  To her horror, Petyr had challenged him to a duel for her hand.  He was only fifteen years old!  What chance would he have had compared to a strong man like Brandon, who was trained to fight and wielded the legendary Valyrian steel sword, Ice?  She begged Brandon to spare him, which he did, but he left Petyr with a slash from his throat to his stomach. Catelyn’s father forbade her to visit Petyr in his sick room, but she waited for the nurse to leave and snuck into his chambers.  She was too afraid to put her mouth on him in case he would do further damage with his writhing, so she contented herself with holding his hand and placing an occasional chaste kiss on it.  As soon as he was fit to travel, Hoster Tully shipped Littlefinger back to his family’s holdfast on the dreary Finger Islands.

However, her mind was made up.  She could not bring herself to marry anyone other than Petyr Baelish.  She would have to find a way to rid herself of Brandon Stark.  Pleading with her father was out of the question, as his honor would not allow breaking the betrothal contract.  She briefly considered giving her maidenhead to any available man, rendering herself useless to the Starks.  Luckily, an opportunity arose unexpectedly when Brandon and his fourteen year-old sister, Lyanna, arrived at Riverrun two weeks before the wedding.  Lyanna confessed that she had been courted by Crown Prince Rhaegar since they had met at Harrenhal and had crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty after the tournament.  Lyanna had always been a sensible girl, prone to run about and play with her brothers, rather than dream about knights and chivalry.  However, her meeting with Rhaegar had turned her overnight into a young woman, with all the lusts and passions that came with it and without the benefit of a mother to guide her.  She had quickly come to rely on Catelyn for advice, as she would a big sister, and confessed that Rhaegar had asked her to run away with him and become his second wife.  Catelyn knew that Lyanna was already betrothed to Robert Baratheon, but partly out of a desire to promote true love because her own had been thwarted, and partly seizing an opportunity to rid herself of Brandon, she encouraged the younger girl to follow her heart and go with Rhaegar.

When Rhaegar came for Lyanna, dressed as a hedge knight to avoid calling attention to himself in the Riverlands, Lyanna kissed Catelyn goodbye, pressed a letter for Brandon and her father into her hands, and rode off with her love.  To be fair, Catelyn had paused and struggled with her plan of action for over two hours before she could bring herself to destroy the letter.  Steeling herself, she had burned the letter in her fire and hinted to Rosie the Gossip that Rhaegar had kidnapped Lyanna.  Within hours, the story had spread around Riverrun and the surrounding lands, with no way to trace it back to Catelyn.  As anyone who knew Brandon could have predicted, he rushed off to rescue his sister…and to his death.

Catelyn had felt some sadness upon hearing of his death and those of his friends and their fathers.  They were unexpected victims in the game she was playing.  However, the relief she felt was palpable, and she foolishly allowed herself to think that she would now be allowed to marry Petyr Baelish instead…until Ned Stark and Jon Arryn appeared at Riverrun, one to fulfill his brother’s marriage contract and the other to wed Lysa.  Of course, her father would not have resisted the lure of not one, but two, excellent matches for his daughters.  Catelyn was full of despair, and only a wooden box she received from Petyr, with a message in its secret compartment, prevented her from doing herself harm.

“My dearest Catelyn, I promise that we will be together.  Though it may take days or months or years, I will earn a place in the world and then come for you.  Do your duty to your family, as I know that it’s the only thing that can make you happy right now.  But when the time comes, be prepared to set all that aside and join me.  Yours forever, Petyr.”

So she had married Eddard Stark, the young Lord of Winterfell and moved to the frozen wasteland that was the North.   She did not love him, but she acknowledged that he had always been kind and gentle with her.  He did not have the skills and experience of Brandon or the passion of Petyr.  Indeed, she had needed to teach him what she’d learned about the act of lovemaking.  Being a fine warrior and a disciplined man, he eventually learned how to make her cry out with pleasure during their coupling.  But it was more of a physical act that did not really touch her woman’s heart, and she knew that he would never be driven mad with lust for her the way Petyr had been.  For a few years, she hoped to hear from her Petyr, but after Arya was born, she decided that he had moved on and resigned herself to permanently belonging to Ned and Winterfell.  In any case, she adored their children—truly loved them from the moment she realized that she was pregnant with her firstborn, Robb.  They became the most important part of her life.  If her love for Petyr had to be sacrificed to create them, that had seemed a reasonable exchange…Which is why she was surprised at her immediate, lustful reaction to receiving his message.

The only wrong note was the presence of Jon Snow at Winterfell.  She hadn’t loved Ned enough to be jealous of the woman who had been Jon’s mother, but she had recognized that indifference was not the expected reaction of a betrayed wife.  She had been so desperate to hide the fact that her heart belonged to someone other than her husband, she supposed that she had exaggerated her response to his bringing the babe to live at Winterfell.  Once she played the part of the angry wife, she could think of no way to drop the mummery.  She felt some pangs of guilt for her treatment of Jon Snow over the years, particularly when she saw the tears in his eyes when she called him a bastard, but appearances had to be kept up.  And she always felt a little perverse pleasure at hurting the son of the man who thwarted her dreams of marrying Petyr Baelish.  As Jon grew up, she had taken it one step further, using her still-beautiful and feminine body to tease and tempt him.  It was small things, like making sure he saw her full breast when she was feeding Rickon, or timing her bathing in the pools of the Godswood when she knew he would come upon her undressing.  It had gotten to the point where the poor boy could barely look her in the eyes without becoming hard.  Knowing that she was making Jon crazy in a way she never had done with his father, had given her a sense of power in a life that was not of her choosing.   She had considered offering her services to relieve him of his suffering, enjoying the idea of cuckolding Eddard Stark with his own son, but decided that the boy was too young, at least for the next few years…Standing on the deck of the boat to King’s Landing, Catelyn laughed out loud at the memory.

Now that she had followed Littlefinger’s commands and sent Ned down to King’s Landing, Catelyn’s life was going to change dramatically.  She did not know what Petyr’s plans were for Ned in the capital, but she was not so foolish to think that she could truly have him while Ned was still alive…But the attacks on Bran had been completely unexpected and shook her to her core.  She had lied about what the message in the box had said, but what if the Lannisters actually had been complicit in Jon Arryn’s death and Brandon’s attack?  She still longed to be reunited with Petyr, but that had become a secondary matter compared to bringing Bran’s attacker to justice.  She knew that she would need Ned’s help and his friendship with Robert Baratheon for that.  Still, it was good to know that there was one person in King’s Landing she could trust, and the thought of seeing him again had been a compelling point in her decision to come herself, rather than sending Theon Greyjoy.  Littlefinger had always been brilliant, and he would help her uncover the truth about what had happened to her son.  She looked out ahead of the ship and could see King’s Landing in the distance.  “I’m almost there, Petyr,” she whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter will show Catelyn's reunion with Littlefinger.


End file.
